Artifacts
Invent an Underground Civilization
Fourth grade students developed an understanding of the concept of change throughout the school year.
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They investigated types of government systems and how societal changes can occur through the democratic process.
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They explored how nonrenewable and renewable energy sources can cause change within communities throughout the world, as well as how a community's choice of energy sources changes based upon the geography, economy, and government of the region.
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They also researched various ecosystems to learn how changes within the system can be impacted by government policies and energy sources.
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As a culminating activity, students demonstrated transfer of knowledge by inventing an underground civilization. Students had to identify an ecosystem location for the civilization, the energy source(s) appropriate for above ground placement in that ecosystem, and the type of government they would use to effectively manage the civilization.
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This task was inspired by the work of John Spencer and a short video he produced. We applied the design process as well as the steps of Spencer and A. J. Juliani's Launch Cycle to guide their work.
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Look, Listen, Learn
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Ask
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Understand the Problem
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Navigate Ideas
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Create a Prototype
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Highlight & Fix
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I regularly use Dr. Sandra Kaplan’s Depth and Complexity Model to help students create meaning. The model is based on a set of icons that are used to prompt students’ thinking. The thinking tools listed below are used within the model. Each tool has an icon to represent the tool and in parentheses I’ve included a question or statement that is related to the icon.
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Language of the Discipline (What vocabulary is specific to the content or discipline?)
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Details (What are the defining features or characteristics?)
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Patterns (What is the sequence or order of events?)
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Rules (What structure underlies the subject?)
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Trends (Note factors that cause events to occur.)
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Unanswered Questions (What information is unclear, missing, or unavailable?)
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Ethics (What moral principles are involved in this subject? What controversies exist?)
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Big Ideas (What is the main idea? What generalizations can be made?)
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Change Over Time (How and why do things change? What doesn’t change?)
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Multiple Perspectives (How would others see the situation differently?)
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Across Disciplines (Relate the area of study to other subjects within, between, and across disciplines.)
The following link has each icon and a definition as a thinking tool.
http://www.davidsongifted.org/Search-Database/entry/A10811
Each tool can be used to help students make meaning. When the tools are used together, students can think more deeply and complexly about the text. For example, when reading The Big Storm by Bruce Hiscock, we identified language of the discipline of meteorology. We also looked for patterns in the weather, identified a rule for how snowflakes are formed, used details to predict what would happen next, and asked questions we couldn’t answer with the text.
The following link is to my website. An example of how we used the icons to begin our garden project is described here and there is a link to an informational video.
http://gatespace.weebly.com/easterns-school-garden.html
I’d like to use this in the library in conjunction with read alouds. I’d focus on using a different icon with each read aloud. If I used Martin Jenkins’ The History of Money, I would focus on the Change Over Time icon. We would look for details that show how money changed over the years. If I used Look Up! Bird-watching in Your Own Backyard, I would focus on the Rules icon. This icon prompts students to consider the structures that are in place and used for classification or organization. We would look for the structures used to classify and categorize birds.